Cat Clyde on the natural world and Mud Blood Bone ahead of Bottleneck gig

Cat Clyde. // photo credit Julio Assis

Cat Clyde plays the Bottleneck on Wednesday, April 1, with Boy Golden. Details on that show here.

In mid-March, Canadian alt-folk artist Cat Clyde returned with her fourth LP, Mud Blood Bone, on Concord Records. Across the album’s 11 songs, Clyde goes from the rollicking opener, “Where Is My Love,” to the quietly devastating closer, “Another Time,” with a stop to cover Marty Robbins’ “My Love” along the way.

Mud Blood Bone is the kind of album that, when you’ve heard it once, you want to hear it again and again, falling in love with the rise and fall of Clyde’s voice and the vibrancy of the band backing her.

Cat Clyde is hitting the road in support of the new album alongside longtime friend Boy Golden, on whose single, “Cowboy Dreams,” Clyde appeared last year.

That tour hits the Bottleneck on Wednesday, April 1, and we hopped on the phone with Cat Clyde to talk Mud Blood Bone and much more.

The Pitch: It seems like you decided to go a little more rollicking on this new album than you did on the last record, Down Rounder. Was there a reason you decided to kick your heels up?

Cat Clyde: Yeah. I feel, writing this record, I went through a big transition in my life, and coming out the other side is a very joyful experience. Yeah, I think I had to kick through it to get to the other side, but I’m grateful to be here.

There’s the Marty Robbins’ cover, “My Love,” and then there’s your opening track, which also has the words “my love” in it. Which came first?

“Where Is My Love” came first, and then I felt like the Marty Robbins song was like an answer to my song.

How’d you come to that Marty Robbins song? Was that one of the things you heard growing up?

No, I think it just came on a playlist, and I was absolutely blown away, and I listened to it repeatedly for days and days, and I couldn’t believe it was a song I had never heard before. I couldn’t believe it was a song that wasn’t extremely popular. It felt like a huge blessing and gift, and it felt like a big answer in my–

You asked about that previous song and I feel that I had a lot of questions about love and what it meant for me and how I wanted to express it and how I wanted to receive it and I felt very lost in that. Feeling like the natural world had a lot of those answers, and I was trying to stay open to that, and then hearing that Marty Robinson was just like, “There it is. There are all the answers.”

You’ve got your friend, Liam Duncan (aka Boy Golden), who helped you record this album and play on it, and you’re going on tour with them. How did the two of you meet and what has made this collaboration grow from friends to recording to touring?

This will be our first time touring together, which is really exciting, but we met at a festival in Ontario. I can’t really remember the name of the festival. I was doing a workshop, which is quite common for Canadian festivals. They just mush bands together, and then you’re expected to jam, or it’s very loose and free, and sometimes it really works, and sometimes it really doesn’t.

That was my first workshop, and I was quite nervous, and it was me, Boy Golden, and an artist whom I was a big fan of. It was really cool. I met him in there, and he really loved my tenor guitar and asked to borrow it for a song, and so I let him borrow it, and then I saw him play and was just absolutely blown away.

I just felt like his set was so groovy and cool. It was awesome. Then, a few months later, maybe six months later, I was feeling in a weird place and I really didn’t have a lot of collaborators that were close to me and, even though our meeting was brief, I just had a really good feeling about Liam, and I knew that he had a studio up in Winnipeg–an analog studio.

That was something that always interested me, but I had never really delved into, so I sent a message, and I was like, “Hey, I’m wondering if I can come up and record some stuff without any expectation of making anything. Just really for fun. See what happens,” and whatever. Then we spent the weekend together and ended up recording six songs and it was just so magical and wonderful, and from there we’ve just been, trying to carve out time to hang out and make music ever since.

You also collaborated with Courtney Marie Andrews on “Press Down,” and I feel like this collaboration is a little bit different from you. Is that another way of pressing through all of what you went through–getting to make friends musically?

Absolutely. I think, in the period where I was going through a lot of difficulties, I really found out who my friends are and also, I made room for a lot of new people to come into my life and my friendships really deepened, but with Courtney Marie Andrews, I was like experimenting with writing collabs, ’cause I had not really done that before.

I wasn’t really super comfortable with it. I didn’t really like the idea of it, but I like to push myself to do things that are uncomfortable for me because I often find gifts and things can come from that. I collaborated with a few people, but when I went over to Courtney Marie’s house, it was just really lovely. We had a nice cup of tea, we chatted, and–writing a song with a stranger is a really strange thing, but I think the experience like of collaborating in general really taught me that it can be anything.

You’re really just connecting with another artist or person that writes or does music and sometimes it’s just you go over and meet some person and you have a cool jam and that’s it, or try and write a song and maybe something happens, maybe it doesn’t, but I think not really holding onto any expectation is really important. I think it was just really nice.

Courtney had a lovely home, and yeah, we had tea and chatted, and I had this song that wasn’t quite finished. We were really talking about what it means for me and bringing up a lot of things that were pretty uncomfortable for me, but it was really nice to have another set of eyes on it and another perspective on it. She lent some really great lyrics and also some chord changes, and it really helped me finish the song, and it was a really good experience.

The press bio that went out about this talks about you really connecting with your Métis heritage as part of making Mud Blood Bone. It seems that leaning into that has given this album a strength and I am wondering if I’m just reading too much into it.

I think the natural world has been something that’s always been an inspiration to me. And I think being on the road for as long as I have the last few years, some really wonderful people came into my life that were really connected to the land. One friend in particular, who’s also Métis, really woke me up to all of the nourishment that I gain when I spend time in the natural world.

This friend had some really beautiful land up in Winnipeg, and we spent some time there, swimming, and just doing country nature shit. It was just so nourishing, and they also had a lot of rituals that I shared, and it was–yeah, it really helped connect me back to that natural world adoration and space, and I think also them being Metis was really nice to share that. And yeah, so I think that was a really great thing, connecting with that, and I think that, overall, that did make my writing stronger.

This album was recorded in Athens, which has a rich musical history, but I feel like recording in Georgia is very different than recording, maybe in Canada. Was that the case?

Yeah. It was really inspiring because the weather was just absolutely fantastic and it was in April, and the trees were just so happy and exploding and there was just flowers blooming everywhere. Because it was springtime, I don’t think it was really hot, but it was like summer weather in Canada and it was just so lovely. It was warm and lovely and great. The people I got to work with were amazing, really inspiring, and talented musicians. It was just a great experience. I’m really glad that I went there.

Did you choose it based on anything having to do with that which has come out of Athens or the melting pot of so many bands that have been so influential over the years?

I don’t really think it came from the space. I think I just really wanted to work with Drew [Vandenberg], and it seemed like he really had a great sense of what I was doing, and he really believed in it and felt like he could serve the songs, and I think he really did.

You’re taking this album out on the road for a very lengthy period of time. What’s been the preparation for both performing these new songs and also just being on the road–how do you maintain health and sanity when you’re in a van for eight to 12 hours a day?

Yeah. I feel like I’ve been off for the last few months, so I’m really excited to be back on the road. I tour pretty extensively, but yeah, I’m really excited. I have been doing a lot of resting and also rehearsing. I’ve been in Seattle with my band and it’s been really lovely. I’ve had some opportunities to go out on the town and I’ve just declined because I know that every night is gonna be Saturday night for me for the next six months.

I’ve just been doing a lot of resting and drinking a lot of smoothies.

Do you have favorite ingredients for your smoothies or do you just try something new?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. I like and I’m actually considering bringing a blender on this upcoming tour because I feel very addicted to my smoothies now. I like to do ginger, turmeric, a whole lemon, and ground pepper. I like to start my day with that. And then after that, I like to do coconut water, banana, berries, dates, or raisins, and chia seeds.

My roommate–he’s got a nice blender, and he’s also my drummer. He’s like, “We can just bring mine.” I think it’s the right move. I think I’m gonna try it and see what happens.

Cat Clyde plays the Bottleneck on Wednesday, April 1, with Boy Golden. Details on that show here.